Yes, I just said I wouldn't be posting as often, but I'm on Holiday...

A bit more on Hamburg. We spent a day and a half in the city, and it's definitely a working town. The harbor tour focused heavily on the working waterfront, with dry and floating docks catering to war ships of every nation and private yachts that include built in weaponry to defend their wealthy owners from pirate attacks. Apparently much of the dock area will soon be filled in to make more room for container storage. A current container ship can now carry 3-4x what typical ships could carry years ago, and there is much less need for docking space and more need for places to put the containers.

We also saw several old churches. Hamburg seems to have an abundance of these, as the people of the city decided long ago that they did not need a central cathedral. Unfortunatly, Hamburg was burned to the ground during WWII (much like Dresden, actually), so most of the architecture has been redone since then. It's interesting to be confronted with history from the other side every now and then. One of the burned out churches has not been restored and is now a memorial to those who died in the war.

We spent the early part of today wandering around the shopping district and admiring the town hall and adjoining open square. We saw a brass band playing in one of the town parks, and it somehow felt very fitting. We also tried to see the world's biggest HO scale toy train collection, but we failed to pre-purchase our tickets, so did not have time to wait the 80 minutes for the next available tour. We may drop back in on the way home.

After we left Hamburg, we headed north to stay near Legoland. Traffic was terrible until we were almost in Denmark, so we had only a few chances to take advantage of the fact that Germany has no speed limits on the autobahn. I remember being surprised to learn that the autobahn wasn't a particular highway, but just a term to refer to all of their highways. In practice, there is currently so much road construction and traffic, that it's impossible to fly along for more than a few kilometers at a time. In addtition I'm now officially too old to feel comfortable going an unlimited speed, so I kept it under 160 km/hr. I'll let you do the math on that one.

We're currently staying at a hotel that feels more like a motel than I'm used to from Europe. All of the rooms exit directly out onto the hotel grounds. This place is clearly set up to cater to the Legoland crowd, as there are trampolines everywhere, a really nice dinner buffet with plenty of kid options (for our kids anyway) and rooms set up to be cozy, but suitable for a family of four if two of them are a bit small. Tomorrow, we leave bright and early to be at the gates when the park opens at 10. I hope the weather will treat us well, as the forcast is for light rain most of the day. I doubt it matters, since the boys will be having a great time in any case. Wish us luck anyway.

We have just wrapped up our second week of a three week vacation. The first two weeks were spent in the US seeing friends and family and generally enjoying being "home." This week, we're motoring around Germany and Denmark with a potential short trip into Sweden thrown in for good measure. Tomorrow evening, we'll be in a hotel within striking distance of Legoland and we expect to have a very nice two day stay there followed by three days in Copenhagen and then a two day trip back to Hilversum. We'll meet some old friends who are visiting just in time to return to work.

Speaking of work, I spent some time in the US looking into my next steps. It's now clear to me that I want to go back when this contract is up, but I need to clean up some things here first. I need a plan and I need to execute it well and quickly. In addition, I need to cut down the amount of time I'm spending on/at work. I realized in the week before this holiday that I'm much more efficient if I'm under a time deadline, so I need to create an artificial one for myself and carve out more time with my family. We're all suffering for my recent schedule, and I don't feel like I'm seeing good results at work in exchange, so time to try something new.

For that reason, I will probably give up on regular updates to this blog from here on out. Reading back, things have been pretty much "poor me" for the last several months, and that is neither a good reflection of how I want things to go, nor a way I intended to use this blog, so I will stop. I'll have to find better ways to keep you, our friends and family, updated, but maybe better monthly postings rather than lame weekly postings will help.

So, status update as of now - we're still recovering from our jetlag. This makes us short tempered and we get on each other's nerves. Tomorrow should be a bit of the same, but mostly in the car, so naps can be had by the younger two of us and I think the prospect of two days at Legoland will turn things around. But, we're all looking forward to being home in Hilversum. We all have things to finish before we go, and even the boys are ready to get on with it.

The Netherlands will never be home, and the Dutch will continue to annoy us, but we shouldn't forget that they also amaze us. They are, on the whole, a friendly and tolerant people, and we shouldn't get caught up too much in their foibles. We all have them (Americans tend to talk too much without saying anything). Culture is a package deal, and you can't have the good bits without some of the troublesome ones.

So, my goals for the next 12-18 months are (in no particular order):

1. Sort out work
2. Find a job back in the US
3. Spend more time with M and the kids
4. See more of the Netherlands
5. See at least Rome, but ideally more of Italy
6. Take as many other trips around Europe as we have time for
7. Enjoy being here, learn what I can from the Dutch and work, and get out sane and happy.

I'm not sure when the next post will be, but trust that we'll all be busy living if we're not busy blogging.

Stay well.