Entries by Mickel

Leann has had a sleepover at Diana’s house. This gave me the opportunity to work on the introduction video of Nederlands Praten. The past few months a few things have changed in my approach and things that I do and the old video introduction did not cover these new insights. So last night I have worked on the new introduction video. Enjoy!

Once a while I get up early to watch Hour of Power. This is an internet church mass led by Rev. Robert H. Schuller. The broadcast compensates for the lack of good local churches that I really can’t wrap my head around.

I found that churches in The Netherlands live in the past too much. I am sure you’ll find exceptions, but this is what I generally find when attending masses. I find that American churches are so much more contemporary, informal and contemporary. It seems that pastors are more part of the community rather than standing “above” them. Frequent readers know that my Father-in-law has been a pastor for many years. When visiting America with Leann attending his Sunday mass used to be something that I always looked forward to. Some of you might say I am biased. I admit that I am impressed with how my Father-in-law speaks in church and tries to get people involved. However, even before I met Leann or her Dad, I have attended a few churches and masses in the US and it gave me the exact feeling.

Robert H Schuller is another well-spoken man. He explains day-to-day life in a very clear way and gives me new paradigms very often. I find his thoughts very inspiring and useful for things I do in life.

I have a habit of Googling my name once a while to see if and what other people write about me and where my name has been used. This morning I went into that habit again and I found this entry. The entry is written by my former Dutch and Geography teacher Mr Oudmayer. He came fresh out of college and the school that he was my teacher on was his first teaching job.

The entry is in Dutch. The reason for mentioning my name in that entry is because I have sat in the same class as Mariëlle Tweebeeke, now a top host of RTL Television, a Dutch national TV station. Earlier this year the president of The Netherlands got himself in trouble with her by making a comment: “You smile so cute!” after insisting that he wouldn’t want to answer one of her questions. Not the president’s smartest remark, but oh well. The entry of my former teacher went into this ordeal.

I found it interesting that he mentioned my name there, because not everyone has been mentioned in there. The people that have been mentioned were sort of ‘remarkable’ persons within that class. Now I am looking for this teacher to give him a heads up. I found the school that he was a teacher on last year, but that e-mail address has been cancelled. I hope the school is willing to help me somewhat further. To be continued…

Mariëlle Tweebeeke nowadays

As some of you might know I am a language coach Dutch. During the summer I put together a training programm to teach the essentials of Dutch inclusive a website / weblog. Today I received an e-mail from someone that would be interested in “ordering” the training programm. I was surprised by this question, because obviously I am doing a few things right here.

I still have an interest in becoming a language teacher. People being interested in what I offer in that field and actually willing to pay for it, makes me feel that I am sensing in the right direction. It’s an awesome feeling.

As of September 1st the E-Controller.Eu weblog will undergo a dramatic change. After 4.5 years of service of the system Serendipity, we decided to change to a weblog system that is more standard in the blogging industry. It’s WordPress. All our other blogs are already in WordPress and it is just handier to have one system to stick to.

Unfortunately I was not able to move the entries created so far to the new system. We have decided that this weblog will stay as an archive. A link to this archive will become available in the new system, so that you have a change of looking in our history. Click here to get a preview of the new weblog system.

I am still fighting off the Helicobacter Pylori bacteria. I am over halfways right now. Three more days to go and then I’ll be off from the medication. The medication is pretty annoying. It gives me an ongoig feeling of being tired. I also have a funny taste in my mouth and I feel dizzy once a while. I think I have reached the bottom of the side effects, meaning that I don’t see things getting worse.

Work is somewhat affected by the medication, but I can attend work and be pretty effective. Tomorrow will be Friday after which I will celebrate the weekend. I will have to stay off the alcohol, though. That will be a little different, but I’ll manage. I am still trying to drag some work towards me. I hope it’ll work, but we’ll have to see.

I have been talking to a very local newspaper (just for this area) to do an article on the voluntary work that I do in the community center. I try to help people with filling in forms, taxes and other activities. However, it has not been busy, although we have been opened for quite some time now. I would want to make this work a little more visible and hopefully this will be the breakthrough.

All in all things are looking up. I can’t wait to get off the medication, though.

In this entry I wrote about a bacteria that is within me. It’s the helicobacter pylori bacteria. Today I have started taking the antibiotics to fight that war with them. It looks like that taking these antibiotics does not interfere with my day-to-day activities. The first hour and a half I get bummed out and then things start to be a little better.

I also started work today. I was caught by a report that management is wanting to have and have been working on that the past few days. The fundament of the reports stands. Tomorrow I hope to finalize the details as much as possible. I am happy with a few changes that I have seen at work. Apart from work the schools started here. The train was busy and everything tells me that the summer vacation and break is over. Soon I will start my community work again and I look forward to teach Dutch again as of September 13th.

Things are looking up

During the car parade yesterday I took a few pictures, too. Those were the last pictures on my camera. You’ll find them here. Happy looking

Yesterday was a day of a full programm. We didn’t have internet in the hotel that we stayed last night, so I write you this entry now. Yesterday we got up early to get things going. We had to pack everything. The night before Leann’s had problems with her new bought earrings. We decided to try and get this solved at the shop that we bought them at. That worked well. We are very happy with the solution that this shop gave. Its name is Crystal World. After that we went back to the hotel and had lunch in a nearby restaurant. Then the taxi came to bring us to the airport.

At the airport I was faced with the annoyance of check-in machines again. Those stupid machines don’t like me and never have. I was about to beat the crap out of it when an assistant came to help. I explained her my frustration and asked her if she would help me. She did. After that we went through bagage drop off. The really funny part is the question: “How is this all more efficient and faster than the old school check-in?”. In my opinion it isn’t. Airports are not my thing. The check-in/drop-off service sucks, security is a drama and prices to get something are skyrocket high. Did I mention how airports are not my thing? Right!

After getting off the plane in Amsterdam we went through baggage claim and made sure to get back to our car. The driver of the car park company drove way too fast and to scary for me. Car park service is more than just parking a car. This company will yet have to learn this. My feedback will hopefully help.

We drove to the hotel that we spent the night in. A co-worker was having his 50th birthday in that hotel and invited us to join him in celebrating this. The party was in the same hotel which made things very easy for us. We stayed till after midnight and then went to bed after a tiring day. This morning we had breakfast and I talked to a few of my co-workers again. Then it was time to check out and to split. All in all it has been a wonderful vacation week.

Today was a pretty full day. We decided to sleep in again and got up by 8:45am. It was nice to get up a little later. We decided to look around on the castle grounds of Vyšehrad. I have never visited this site myself, simply because I was not much into castles or cathedrals. This proved to be a mistake on my part. It was absolutely gorgeous. Fortunately the entrance tickets to the grounds were not that high. In fact a lot of it was free to look around on. That was absolutely nice. The cathedral is very pretty inside and out.

After looking at this castle we hopped on the public transport. I have made use of the tram more than I did in all the visits before. I always found it difficult to use the tram system and rather used the metro system and walked. I am getting the hang of the tram system now and it brought us to lunch in Molo 22. I found this location on the internet and I found the pictures beautiful. It proved to be an excellent choice. We had pasta and it tasted very well. On top of that it was really cheap!

On our way back I got us on the tram to metro station Staroměstská. This was easier than going by metro. It worked well. We went to visit a shop called Crystal World. Leann wanted to buy earrings and she did. The earrings are made of Bohemian crystal and has Swarovski components in it. I am sure they look pretty on her! I ran into some annoyance in the shop. Some Spanish woman was trying to be an attention whore and kept interrupting the shop assistant in her work. I could handle that up to a point that I wanted the shop assistant to correct a mistake she made with us. I kindly asked the Spanish woman to give the shop assistant some room and she went totally bananas. Oh well… sucks to be her.

After buying the earrings I wanted to buy a beer glass and a key chain for myself and then we headed back to the hotel to relax. I was a bit out of it, because I worried too much over things that we need to do on Saturday when going back to Holland. It was a good thing that I took care of that. After that we went out for dinner. We found a restaurant called U Gráffů. This must be the worst restaurant in the entire Prague vicinity. The D’abelská Topinka was way to hard. I was about to order a chainsaw to cut that thing in pieces. The main course was brought while Leann was still eating her starter (un-friggin’-believable). The meat was overcooked and dry. I couldn’t use my fork to pick up a kroket potato (they supposed to be soft). I wanted to bring this to management attention, but they were not available. I am sure that you can imagine that they won’t see us in that place ever again. I explained that in a note to the manager with my business card with it.

We went to a restaurant afterwards that we knew from an earlier visit. Here we had a dessert (Horká Láska) and a drink. Leann has tasted Becherovka and Fernet Stock. These are typical Czech brandys. She disliked both of them . It was awesome that she tried, though.

Now we’re relaxing and ready for bed later on. Pictures of today’s events are to be found here. Enjoy!

Today we decided not to do a whole lot. Hopefully this will help Leann recover from the cold that she caught and the general tiredness that she feels. She’s still at things, but getting better. We did go to a street called Na Příkopě. This is a shopping street between the main square and the Namestí Republiky (a square called after the Republic. At the end of this street you’ll find a department store called Kotva. Unfortuntely this department store was under renovation, so we couldn’t see everything.

Leann found a very nice new trolley at Kotva. We got some discount on it which was nice, as well. The most important thing: it’s pink/purple! So Leann is very happy with it. We will have to get rid of an older trolley that we have. On the other side of the street they build a new shopping center that holds 200 shops. We were too tired to go through it and the chances of that shopping center being like the ones we have already seen are big. We did stop at Starbucks to rest and get some coffee.

The second leg of today’s trip brought us to the outskirts of Prague again; this time to the Southeast of Prague called Háje. I stayed in a hotel in that part of Prague when I came here the first time. A lot has changed ever since. They expanded the shopping mall BIG time and it actually has a new and big cinema. It appears that the Western influence found this side of town, as well. We actually found the German chain supermarkt Lidl on this side of town. Nevertheless, it was nice to see that a lot had not changed. It still had this old Czech taste that it used to have and I was very happy with that. They did color the buildings to update to the next century.

We found a restaurant where we ate lunch (my review here). Finally Leann got to taste the smažený sýr (fried cheese). It came with sauce and french fries and it was awesome. We hung around in that place a little bit and then headed back to the hotel to rest a little more. All in all it has been a nice day.

Today I didn’t take any pictures, because it was a bit rainy. Stay tuned for the next load of pictures tomorrow, though.

You might be thinking: “Hey!! Where’s last night’s update??”. Leann was going to do that, but poor her was so bummed out that she couldn’t. She also caught a cold. Hopefully she’ll get better soon. There’s a lot to write, so I will take over from Leann.

Yesterday we visited the Prague Market. This is the biggest market in the Czech Republic. Most of the market people are Asians or local farmers. We bought a few things there, too. Leann bought a nice new wallet and an umbrella. I managed to get a skull as neklace and a new purse that is a little bigger than what I had. The purse can actually hold my netbook, which is awesome, as well. The idea is to get your things for as cheap as possible. They know that you’re foreigners, so they try to get as much as possible for their goods. So, that means bargaining. I like that game and that game has been invented for me. The Prague market has a huge hall in which they have a vegatable and fruit market. Leann thought it was paradise in there and is disappointed that they don’t have markets like that in Holland (or may be they do??). After we sat down for coffee and rested a bit our tour moved on.

The next stop on the tour would be Prague Castle. Prague is the residence city of the Czech Republic and the president resides in a part of the Prague Castle. The castle is located on a hill and we climbed the old stairs up to the castle. It was an incredible climb up there, but the rewards (the view) was wonderful. We also went inside the castle and the cathedral that is part of the castle. To see the insides was really breathetaking. A short impression of the castle is to be found here, here and the wiki page. After our tour we decided to have lunch in the castle. The lunch was yummy. We decided to have Czech Gulash. I had a taste of the castle beer and I also enjoyed that. Czech know how to brew their beer .

The rest of the day we decided to stay in and around the hotel with drinks. Leann tried a Margarita but was disappointed with that. I had some more Czech beer, which was awesome. For dinner Leann had a big grilled cheeseburger and I went with the pork steak. By 9pm we both decided to get some sleep. It had been another wonderful day.

On a different note: I have written a few reviews on Czech restaurants this morning. You’ll find our restaurant guide here. I promised my Mother-in-Law hundreds of pictures. I took 275 pictures yesterday and 180 pictures made it to the picture section. Have fun looking!

Leann managed to write a book last night on Prague and she very well described yesterday’s events. I hope she’s somewhat ok with me practsing my Czech skills. It’s been a while since I put that into practise and it goes better and better. It could put Leann back into those days in which she did not or barely speak Dutch. I have to make sure that she doesn’t feel left out.

Yesterday we overdid a few things, I guess. I ended the day with a big headache and went to bed very early. I asked Leann what time it was at 9:45pm and must have fallen asleep not very much later after that. I woke up by 5am so, I slept really good. We have to find ways to cover a few things differently. I am wanting to try to cramp as much as possible in a day. The headache must have been a result of that.

Leann wrote about the ice cream and hot raspberries. I first ‘met’ this thing in Austria. The dish is called hot love. Leann wrote how yummy it is, and it really is. You might want to try this yourself. It appears that it’s easy to make. I claim that it’s better than chocolate!! .

I am not entirely sure what’s on for today. Most of the rain that fell during the night has left the city. This website will give you the latest and greatest in the Czech weather, by the way. The button “srazky” gives you a doppler rader of the situation in the Czech Republic. On the map you’ll find three little squares. The square most left is where Prague is. The button “animace” on the left top of the map will give you a animation of the last two hours.

This is it for now. Stay tuned for more updates

I went to bed early last night, so I am up and running already. We are planning to get up in about half an hour (6:15am) anyways to get our day started. In the last entry I read some hidden questions to give some facts about the Czech Republic. I am happy to give some facts and how I look towards this country. I have gone back in my memory and this will be the 14th time that I visit this country. I just love it here.

The Czech Republic is a very cheap country although the prices keep rising fast. Downtown Prague you’ll pay the big prizes to buy anything, but outside that area you can do very cheap. Leann and I had a 3 course meal with drinks (wine and beer also included) for Kc 750. That’s € 36 (or roughly $42). Because this was in a hotel, it was still expensive, but in The Netherlands you’d be paying a whole lot more for what we had. All other things are a lot cheaper than in Holland, as well.

The capital city of the Czech Republic is Prague (Wikipedia link). The metropolitan area of Prague holds 1.9 million people. It’s a very big city. The public transport here is awesome and they keep expanding. The city has three major underground lines, a lot of tramlines and many, many busroutes. The system is very easy and extremely cheap. A 60 minute travel ticket cost Kc. 26 and this is € 1.30 (=about $1.60). This system makes driving in Prague totally unneccessary.

Carolyn wrote about the Czech beer and how dark it is. There are lighter versions of the Czech beer. Dark beer is not my “cup of tea” either. I like Pilsner Urquell and Budvar, although Budvar is somewhat heavier. In the US you probably know Budweis. Well, Budvar is also Budweis, however, this is the one and only true Budweis, brewed in a city called české Budějovice (Wikipedia link for city information).

I feel that Prague is my second “heimat” (home). Coming back here after all these years brought back those feelings again. It’s extremely pretty here. I shared some pictures with you and I plan to share a lot more pictures with you. Stay tuned for that .

Today we went to Prague in the Czech Republic. We got up early to make sure that we’d be at 10am in the parking lot where we have our car parked. It’s a commercial parking lot, since parking on the airport is way too expensive. We moved over our luggage and then went on our way to the next leg of our trip to the airport.

I learned that airports are just not for me. I really can’t get at ease at security. They ask you to do so much that it’s not funny anymore. I deliberately slacked at the exit to piss off the security on the other side while taking my time packing my stuff together. After that we went to get us some well deservied Starbucks and went shopping. While shopping I found an excellent sleeve in which my netbook fits. I am really happy with that, because this thing will make my life soooo much easier at airport security. I’ll just whip it out from the front pocket of my trolley to be done and over with it.

The flight got half an hour delayed because of heavy traffic over Germany. I didn’t like that, but it didn’t really tick me off either. Although we ticketed for Czech Airlines the flight was executed through KLM. I guess they are just like Dutch Rail: “It’s takes you a bit, but you’ll get where you need to be.” Bums! At Prague airport we had “first class service” waiting for us to transfer us to the hotel. That worked well and I was happy with that ride.

In the hotel we checked in and I took some pictures of the room that we have. I am a little bit disappointed over the size of the room, but it’s worth the money. We have an internet connection here, which is very important to us and the connection works excellen. We unpacked the luggage and then moved downtown to get our first bits and pieces of Prague. I noticed that a lot was different and yet a lot stayed the same. We decided to get dinner somewhat outside of Prague (it’s waaaay cheaper there) and to have a few drinks. I had Leann try some Czech wine. I guess it wasn’t her thing. I had a Czech beer!

All in all it was an awesome first day. I look forward to tomorrow. Pictures are available in the picture section. Have fun looking!