82 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
82 lines
5.6 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Week 7, Sunday: To Bruxelles"
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date: 2024-09-15T21:55:00+02:00
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---
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{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/sezza.png" alt="Credit: Sezza, YouTube" >}}
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Yesterday at 04:00 Marina and I both heard some voices on the camping site, we think it was Nando
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bringing somebody to their final resting place. Last night, we were these people! Having found our
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pillow at around 03:45, the 10am alarm clock was somewhat _persona non grata_ in our _Pipowagen_.
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But, the bladder has something to say as well, for Marina even the second time ... but we were up on
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our feet and nommed a little bit of breakfast and at around 10:50 we made our way to the car, found
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Christel and reported back on the situation at her neighrbor's place, joining the family in the
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backyard of Arend and Esther's place just before 11:00.
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We enjoyed a coffee together as Job came round on his loaner bike. Job was en route to Utrecht this
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morning, for a dinner with friends. Not being able to withstand his puppydog eyes, we drove him to
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Heerenveen well in time for his train to Urecht. The train station at Heerenveen was completely
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empty with only an idle bus hanging out in the front. Byebye Job! Good to see you again :)
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Now our car informs us that the route is over _de Polder_ aka Flevoland, but before we're allowed
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onto (or, rather _into_) the polder, the highway has a sudden traffic jam -- cars are stopped
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because the bridge is open! We lounge for about ten minutes and as abruptly as the traffic jam came,
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it dissolved and we were back underway. Hey, if we're in Flevoland anyway, we may as well take a
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look if Michael is home! I call Michael's parents and indeed, the one-year-old is home and accepting
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visitors. Marina has never met Michael before, so I invite myself over for lunch, which Paul and
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Henrieke are just having as I call.
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At 13:00 we rock up to the Coloclue residence where Henrieke is making _Stoofvlees_ (English:
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Flemish Beef Stew). Nice work, Henrieke!! Also: nice work, WEiRD! He has sprinted to the store to
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get a loaf of bread for us to consume, and he even warmed it up in the oven for us, aww!! We eat
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some nice bread with sliced cheese and tuna salad, and slurp on a coffee in the kitchen where the
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smell of home is being cooked up. Michael is having an afternoon nap but joins us at 13:45 or so,
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and we play with him a little bit. It's fun to put plastic fruit on his head, and we exchange
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tomatoes for grapes and a lemon for a good ten minutes. It's hilarious - god I wish I was a
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_dreumes_ so that life was so simple and fun and plastic fruit was da bomb!
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But, we're on a mission to drive to Brussels today, and we've now broken an e-Car roadtrip rule:
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you're supposed to eat while you charge. Not eat, and then still charge .. but it was totally worth
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it. We have some juice left in the tank, so we drive to Hilversum where the supercharger is being an
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asshole today, we want 150kW and get 34kW at best, even after changing chargers. At this rate, it's
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going to take 1h50min to charge, bah.
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We forge a new plan B: continue driving to Breda and arrive there on fumes (or in an electron
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cloud?) which actually goes quite well. In Breda, we are greated with 110kW of electrons running
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into the battery, and this deserves a celebration: we eat a portion of _Van Dobben Bitterballen_
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(English: really delicious junk food)! It's so nice to have this enjoyment with an iced tea or coke
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zero, to then meet the car in a roughly fully charged state, ready for the last leg.
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The last leg was annoying because it contained the Ring of Antwerp. Djeez, stop and go much!? After
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the mildly annoying bits, though, the rest of the road to Brussels was super smooth. We arrived
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there at 18:45 and parked the car right across the road from Eimear&Andrew! The carpark has an AC
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charger so we give Tessa some love, and the battery will be fully charged tomorrow morning when we
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want to leave.
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Andrew is an old-timer from Cisco that I know from the VPP community, and we have a tonne of fun. It
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starts with drinking the gift we brought - a Spanish Rioja (Reserva), quickly followed by a second
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bottle. We have fun exchanging stories until the stomach beckons, and then we walk over to [[Fin de
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Siècle](https://www.findesiecle.be/)] where we have a fabulous meal with a little drop of
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wine still. Marina and I are running low on sleep so we keep the nightlife to a
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respectable two bars: [[Le
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Cercueil](https://www.dubuisson.com/fr/ambushadeurs/lecercueil/)] where we were
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the *only* people there at 23:30, maybe everybody was at Church? After that we
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visited one more bar called [[Goupil Le Fol](http://www.goupillefol.com/)],
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where one last Kriekske is consumed. We end up back at the appartment at 01:30
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and I'm honestly ready for a sleep.
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## Pictures of the Day
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{{< gallery-category >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-15/IMG_1329.JPG" caption="We enjoy a few bitterballen at the supercharger in Breda, well deserved" >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-15/IMG_1332.JPG" caption="The view from Andrew's pad in smack middle of Brussels" >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-15/IMG_1336.JPG" caption="@yourtch is clearly an omnivore, and devours a pork knuckle" >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-15/IMG_1339.JPG" caption="At the Cercueil we drink a few beers - it's weird because we're the only ones here (and I don't personally recall that ever happening to me before)" >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-16/IMG_1342.JPG" caption="We walk back through beautiful Gallerie Royale." >}}
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{{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-16/IMG_1343.JPG" caption="I bump into this very huggable biker bunny. Not drunk." >}}
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{{< /gallery-category >}}
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{{< gallery-modal >}}
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{{< gallery-script >}}
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