April 4th. Dima is here!

Dan swiped out Coray & Nikkie for Dmitry at the airport. And our fun life continued just like it was in November. During the day we worked, and during the evening walked around to grab some beer.

We accidentally discovered the coronation stone right across the street next to the police station. 7 Saxon kings were crowned upon that stone and that’s how Kingston derives its name. It’s only been 9 months of us living here. We were actually trying to trace down where swans go in the evenings along the stream that passes our building and came upon the stone on our way. There is a lot of egg laying around and soon we will have some cygnets, ducklings, and other baby birds (my vocabulary pretty much exhausted itself after the first two. 

The week was still somewhat jumbled. On Wed I went to Utrecht for one day business trip. I liked Utrecht – it is small and pretty and the most impressive town I’ve seen to date that gives so much space to cyclers. There is a separate wide 2 lane path on both sides of the street in the center of town. 

A whole column of parents with kids, business men and women, students are moving in both directions in the morning. Hardly anyone seems to be driving or walking. I felt strange to be one of the few people walking. Also, having been used to the fact that in the UK, as pedestrian I am the lowest type of moving creature, cyclers coming from all directions were a bit scary.

Malie Hotel was not that great – the Internet barely worked, which for a business traveler was pretty useless, despite the staff being very nice. I took the UTC cab from Amsterdam airport to Utrech. Going there was 50 euro, coming back was over 100. Rip off and they don’t even take credit cards.

Kids are off for the next few weeks. We are going to go to Normandy next week. See the town/dirve in the morning, work, have dinner and work some more. They better have good working Internet over there.

Since there was no activity on the HR front we told our landlord that we are leaving ourselves. After a string of emails with the landlord and rental agency to find out who will be walking us out we finally ended up back with the landord and no certainty on how it all will end. The agency got to work bringing in candidates, and at first had requested that we would be present, which I told them was ridiculous and so they've stopped communicating. It would be nice if the landlord had got the boiler fixed prior to starting to rent the apartment out again. The next victim will have their hot showers cut out for them, literally.