Shopping, etc

Busy week at work.  Settling into life in the big city and loving it for the most part (the isolation does get to me sometimes).

These pictures were taken at the market...

Translates to "peanut cheese".

How to say "Ranch" in Dutch.

for Vashti

By request for Joe.
The cases on the floor have a handle in the center for carrying.
They're plastic; when you're done, you put the whole thing on a conveyor and run it through the machine to get your deposit back. (I'll take a picture of the deposit machines later).

from the other end

For Ingi...

Thursday is Fry-day. 
The whole team gets frites for lunch, which is basically the Dutch national dish. 
They're different than the states, though; they're usually covered in sauce.
Mayonnaise is the most popular.  If you go to McDonalds, they give you packets of mayo.
I get mine with satesaus which is the kind of sauce you get in Thai chicken satay.

Best spaghetti bolognese I've ever had.
I went back four more times.

Two more random bits

I wasn't joking.

what
(caption: Pregnant! Greetings from Eersel)

Houdoe!

Long overdue

It's been a week since my last post.  Sorry about that. 

Part of it is because I have been going through a lot this week and I want the posts here to be positive.  I'm doing OK, I'll get through it. Just a rough patch. 

Random pictures. Let me show you them.

Home, US work, dutch work, oncall. 
I'm only oncall one week a month and I jailbroke fixed it so that I'm only carrying two now.

Fruit. Cocktail. Pizza.  It actually wasn't bad.

I spent the last two weeks in Eersel, the village where work is.  It's very idyllic and full of 70-year old tourists.  Here's why.

My home for the week.  It means "The Hooligan (or Menace)".

At the end of the marktplats

Yes, it was used by a marching band.  No, I didn't take pictures.

Marktstraat, where the restaurants are

in the marktplats

"We're open every day at 10am, kitchen opens at 12:00"

I'm still settling in to the way things are done here. Shopping is only done on Saturdays because everything closes at 18:00 (I don't get home until about half an hour later) during the week and pretty much nothing is open on Sundays.  The exception is that some markets are open from 16:00 - 20:00 but everyone is there so it's a madhouse.  If restaurants are open on Sunday they're only open from about 17:00 to 21:00.  It's actually kind of nice, you're forced to take it slow for one day a week.

This past week I moved into my "permanent" room in central Eindhoven.  I may end up leaving again because I can't find anyplace here that doesn't charge extortionate rates for wireless access.  It sounds like a first-world problem but I need it for work. 

The first choice here wanted €15 per day.  The second choice is closed for renovation until 2011. The place I finally settled on seemed ideal until I realised that they seemed to have left out the word "available" from "wireless in every room". They want €5,95 per hour!  I whined about it and they let me have a wired connection, but it's really flaky (I get dropped often).  That combined with the lack of laundry facilities almost makes this place a no-go.  Well when I say "lack" I mean lack of realistically affordable laundry facilities.  Here's the price list!

Yes, they are serious. 
It's literally cheaper to buy new clothes.

So I asked if there was a laundrette anywhere nearby and they told me "nowhere in the Centrum, sorry...many guests ask so I've looked but there isn't anything even close".  What does google maps have to say about that?  Two, just over a kilometer away.  Fucker.

So that's the story so far.  I have lots more pictures but I can't get the iphone to play nice with this laptop so they'll have to wait.

Houdoe!

Eindhoven

By the end of the first full week in Eersel, I was ready to kill someone (it takes ten minutes to walk the length of the village, if that).  Solution?  Eindhoven!  It's 16km away and takes about half an hour by bus.

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was on a mission (media shopping!) but I'm moving there this week so there will be other opportunities.

Steensel, the next village over from Eersel

lots of farms in the area

sculpture on the way to central Eindhoven

perspective is everything

right in the middle of the city

statues on the train bridge

I never figured out what this building was

Lots of churches in Eindhoven

very thin building

the name is familiar...

graffiti

Heineken hotel!

Dinner time (spaghetti bolognese)

heheh

Lego!

The locals are very friendly

I left it here somewhere...

Still having network problems

I was moved into a new room on Sunday which techincally has wireless, but it's at about 2400 baud and drops every 20 seconds.  I'll be moving hotels this week.  In the meantime here are a couple of random pictures (in no particular order).

sausagefest meets here

Mr L is so proud of his Citroën!

The hamster overheated.  Cleanest engine ever, though.

US culture has much to be proud of.

Per request: I was asked to take pictures of dinner.
Flickr stereotype for the win!
This was an omelette.

REALLY good pizza.  Srsly.

Carpaccio and onion soup.

Bike hutch at the hotel.  Most of them are out for the day.

Enough said.

The fruit machines aren't always evil.  €45 on a €2,60 investment.

Inside joke.

250 grams of meat.  The salad was IN the hamburger.

View from the new hotel room

BRILLIANT idea.  The razor has clippers at the end of the handle.

A week is not enough for Europe!

Not slacking, waiting

I haven't posted since Friday because of Internet problems.

My room here at De Bengel had no wireless (broken AP) and the room they moved me to keeps dropping the connection. I'll be changing hotels soon because of that; it's not so much a first-world problem as a business requirement. I'm oncall next week and NEED access.

I'll try to post from work tomorrow.